


Future Starts Slow

by gadgetorious



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gadgetorious/pseuds/gadgetorious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy returns home after Puente Antiguo to resume her life, only now she's under SHIELD surveillance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Darcy Lewis was on a mission from God.  Her mission was holy.  It was righteous.  Her single objective: to retrieve her iPod without being taken into federal custody.

It was an unfortunate, if altogether rather unsurprising fact that her mission was also one doomed to failure from the start. Now she was waiting in a hard chair in an empty room for whatever Man in Black was supposed to come neuralyze her and drop her back in the desert.

When the door did finally open she was mildly surprised to see Agent Coulson von Sticky Fingers himself walk in and take the seat across from her.

“Darcy Lewis,” he said.  He clasped his hands over the folder he’d brought with him and leaned forward, wearing the most stoical ‘are you fucking kidding me’ expression she had ever seen.

 “’Sup, Agent K? Where’s my iPod?”

 He ignored her question.  She couldn’t say she was surprised.

 “Would you care to explain what possessed you to sneak past an armed guard and several posted signs clearly prohibiting your access in a government facility?”

“Sure. See, it’s like this: _you took my iPod._ ”

 “As I’m sure Agent Lowell explained before he made the mistake of leaving you unsupervised, your MP3 player will be returned to you when it's through being processed by SHIELD. Agent Lowell, I might add, has been shown the error of his ways. You are, and I quote, ‘my problem, now,’” he stated flatly as he shuffled the papers out of their file.

“There’s nothing on there that you guys need unless David Bowie somehow contains the secrets of the universe.”

“I wouldn’t rule it out.  But until it’s been processed any further attempts at reclaiming it are ill-advised at best.”

 “And at worst?” She probably didn’t really want to know but if there was one thing her mother had impressed on her as a child, it was that she didn’t know when to stop.

 “You could be charged with espionage,” he said without pause, or without in fact even looking up from his papers. Darcy blanched.

“It’s _my_ iPod!”

 This time Coulson did look at her, which only really served to show how unimpressed he was with that statement. “You were found in an archive room containing top-secret information pertaining to national security.”

 “I don’t want to spy on you, I want to listen to my fucking music while I pack to go away from you! This is a temporary base, how much could you possibly have archived? And anyway, I already know all sorts of things only your minions are supposed to know now, right? I mean, we literally had an alien visitation.  Mulder would shit.  I should be on the payroll or something; my clearance should be super high. What are benefits like?”

“Believe it or not, Miss Lewis, SHIELD is not in the habit of employing people on the basis of being a potential security leak.  Here is my a counter offer: you can sign a nondisclosure agreement so binding you won’t be able to tell anybody what you’ve had for breakfast any time in the last six weeks”—he held up his sheaf of papers—“and settle for indefinite SHEILD surveillance instead of detention.”

Darcy let that percolate for a moment. “Even in the shower?”

Coulson didn’t blink.

“Is there an option B?”

“You mean other than potentially being a charged with a federal crime?”

“Yeah, okay. Gimme.” She sighed, adjusted her glasses, and began the tedious process of reading through the forms.

Coulson stood and turned for the door. “I’ll leave you alone while you look those over. The door locks from the outside but just put the pen down when you’re finished and somebody will come to escort you out.”

“Well that’s a little creepy.” She looked around for a camera or a one-way mirror but found nothing.  She supposed that really didn’t mean anything. She heard the soft click of a lock and looked to find that Coulson was gone.

“I’ll just be in here then,” she muttered. “Signing away all my civil liberties.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betaed by tocourtdisaster.
> 
> Fic title from [Future Starts Slow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwudqTCkBis) by The Kills


	2. Arm in Arm in Arm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, Norse mythology’s real. I know I was surprised. You?”

Returning to school was almost surreal. She’d only been gone for less than two months but coming back she felt like she was visiting another life—a feeling that the drastic weather change between New Mexico and Oregon was doing absolutely nothing to abate.  If it weren’t for the conspicuous dude in the black suit she kept seeing around her apartment (she’d decided his name was Kevin) she might have been afraid she’d dreamed it all.

Conspicuous might be a strong word; she only really knew he was there because she looked for him after he had given her his card the first day back home and told her to call if she was approached about the incident in Puente Antiguo. He was probably around a lot more often than she actually saw him but she pretended otherwise because the illusion of privacy was a comforting one.

 Unless it wasn’t.

 Today it just felt isolating as she sat through her first class of the semester: an environmental policy course that not even her mildly hot professor could get her interested in. Some of that was probably due to having aging, Oregon hippies for parents, so she’d had the basics of this shit down since she was 12, but mostly she just couldn’t seem to get excited about things that weren’t, you know, on fire. Or flying. Or flying and on fire. Also, she’d decided that environmental policy would probably benefit from more hot dudes in capes.

Of course, officially, none of it had ever happened. So she sat quietly in the back and doodled abstract patterns until the class was over and then made a beeline for the door. Craning her neck to look around as she made her way across campus under a walrus-print umbrella probably looked pretty ridiculous, but it paid off because her personal stuffed suit appeared behind her after ten minutes—when he finally figured out it was him that she was looking for. That didn’t stop her from jumping when he showed up.

“Something I can help you with, Miss Lewis?” came a voice from a space she swore to god she had _just_ vacated.

“Oh my god!” she yelped, and wheeled around to face him. “You people are all ninjas. Breathe louder or something; you gave me a heart attack.” 

He didn’t say anything, just looked at her. She wondered if that was something they taught them at secret agent school. Probably. 

“Alright, Kevin,” she said when she could breathe again, looping an arm through his still elbow. “You’re coming with me.” 

“My name isn’t Kevin.” He wasn’t moving, which was unfortunate because the guy was a tank and there was no way she was getting him anywhere except for under his own steam. 

“Well you didn’t give me a name when you gave me your card, which was also void of names, so I figured that left me three options: either you’re just really bad at introducing yourself, your name is actually a ten-digit string of numbers, or you _have no name._ I named you. You’re welcome, Kevin.” 

“Agent Franco.” The poor man just looked confused now. 

“Agent Kevin Franco"—she turned to look him in the eye—"tell me what I have to do to get you to walk to First Cup down on Woodstock with me.”

 “Stop calling me Kevin?” 

“Tell me your first name,” she countered. She’d been calling him Kevin in her head for three days and there was no way she was going back to “that agent guy who’s supposed to be watching me like a creeper.” 

“Lonnie. And I’m pretty sure I’m not actually supposed to be socializing with you.” 

She squinted at him. “You’re sure you wouldn’t prefer Kevin?” 

“Very.” 

“Fine, Lonnie, we’re not socializing. This is just going to look like socializing because we’re keeping it on the down low. C’mon, people are staring at you and that’s just lazy ninja-ing. I’ll buy you an official, work-related bagel.” She steered him toward the street. 

Of course, once they were actually seated in the coffee house she was a little more reticent. She wasn’t sure what to say. Lonnie was her only option for venting but she didn’t know this guy. He seemed okay. She hadn’t found any cameras in her bathroom at any rate. She stuffed her bagel in her mouth in the long-held method of postponing mealtime chatter. 

She chewed thoughtfully and tried to decide which angle to tackle this from. She should probably choose one thing to freak out about—and now that it had sunk in and been contextualized by her day to day life, she _did_ plan to have a bit of a freak-out—having a meltdown about all of it at once was probably ill advised. 

Eventually there was nothing for it, she supposed, but to dive right in. 

“So, Norse mythology’s real. I know I was surprised. You?” 

“Uh…” 

“Pretty cool though.” She frowned. “I mean, aside from all the really gross stuff, ‘cause I looked into it and _man._ You don’t think it’s _all_ real _,_ do you?” 

“I… really don’t think I should be having this conversation with you. Especially in a coffee shop.”  Lonnie looked around him rather nervously but they were alone in their corner of the shop.  

“Well I can’t talk to my actual friends about it—as your mere presence is testament to—so you should probably buck up, Lonnie, because my world view has been turned on its head and I process out loud. If I can’t do that, it gets all backed up; ugly things happen.” 

“I’m only here for a week and my security clearance just got bumped up for this assignment. I don’t really know—“ 

“Bumped up? To watch a spazzy college student eat bagels?” 

“I’m new,” Lonnie muttered. 

“Seriously. But like, the snake thing. That can’t be real, because _Google Earth_ ,” Darcy continued, gazing deeply into her latte. 

“Yeah, I didn’t really study Norse mythology so I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“The—“ Darcy stared. “The snake with the—This is your _job._ How new _are_ you?” 

“I got recruited right out of school; I finished my training five weeks ago.” 

“Let me revise the question: how _old_ are you?” 

“Twenty-two.” 

“Oh my god.” Darcy’s mouth fell open. “You can’t babysit me—I’m older than you are.” She stared out the window. “I knew I should have listened to my grandma when she said a gap year was only one year. Ugh. I am depressed. I’m being watched by Agent Baby.” 

Lonnie cleared his throat and took a long pull from his coffee while Darcy regarded him with narrowed eyes. She wasn’t really flush with alternatives. 

“A week, you said?” she asked at length. 

He nodded. 

“You have internet access?” 

He just raised his eyebrows. Of course he had internet access. 

“Right, you hop on the Google machine. Maybe hit up Wikipedia. I have Network Analysis tomorrow until four, at which time I will meet you back here and you will be ready to lend an informed ear to my crisis. Capisce?”   

“Miss Lewis, I’m not—“ 

“Good talk, Lonnie.” She clapped him on the shoulder and headed back out into the drizzle.

 

***

 

If there was one thing that she did not miss about being in New Mexico—other than pretty much _all of it_ —it was living out of a trailer. Darcy’s apartment was about as unglamorous as it got: a single bedroom barely large enough for her bed, scattered, mismatched furniture from IKEA, garage sales and her parents’ storage unit, and a tiny kitchen barely big enough to turn around in, but it was hers. Plus her hot water worked which was a boon. 

She plugged in her laptop and then changed into her PJs, because no hour of the day was too early for comfort. She settled on the couch, draped her power cord carefully over the arm and opened her email: dinner invite from Mom, spam, Amazon receipt—oh, email from Jane. 

Darcy hadn’t heard from Jane since they’d been taken to MIB temporary headquarters for “a couple of quick questions.” Jane had still been in the room with her own SHIELD drone when Darcy had been escorted out by no less than three armed agents. 

> Darcy,
> 
> What did you file the second modification of the schematics for the accelerator under? It’s not under A.  I looked.

 That was it. Seriously? After a week of radio silence she didn’t even merit a hello? What if SHIELD had decided she wasn’t worth the risk and disappeared her or something? She cracked her knuckles and hit reply.

>  Hi Jane,
> 
>  I’m doing fine, by the way.  Home, alive, attending all the classes I’m supposed to.
> 
>  WHERE ARE YOU? Did you get your stuff back from The Man, or have they even let you leave the building? I’ve got a suit following me around but I don’t think he’s going to be here long.
> 
>  -D 
> 
> P.S. The accelerator schematics are filed under “Infernal Machine.” Check the “2.0” tab. Later! 
> 
> P.P.S. Can you check and see if they stuck my iPod in with your stuff?

She considered feeling bad for yelling at Jane—especially since she really might still be stuck dealing with SHIELD—but reminded herself that Jane needed to be reminded to behave like a human once in a while; it’s practically why she’d taken Darcy on as her intern in the first place. God knows it hadn’t been for her knowledge of quantum foam, which she was still 90 percent certain was a men’s shaving cream no matter what Jane said it had to do with wormholes. 

She got up, shuffled to the fridge, opened it, closed it. Opened it again just to make sure was really nothing she wanted. Closed it again. Shuffled back to the couch. 

She flopped over and flailed an arm out until she connected with her laptop keyboard. Thanking god and Steve Jobs for iTunes hot keys, she turned on some music and buried her head in the cushions. 

She read for a bit, checked her email compulsively, and just generally did nothing in particular until night fell. 

Being home was really not as nearly as amazing as she’d been imagining it would be. Granted, she didn’t wish herself back in SHIELD custody either. She didn’t want to be here, she didn’t want to be there; she had no idea what she wanted. Which was pretty much the Story of Darcy Lewis, starting with shopping trip before her first day of school that had resulted in her going home with two lunch boxes—one with princesses and the other with Thundercats—and continued to her present as a 24 year-old Poli-Sci nee Humanities major. 

How did people decide what the hell to do with themselves? How did they commit themselves to one thing, to the exclusion of all others and say, “yes, this thing is what I want to do.” Some people did, she knew. She bet Agent Coulson was one of those freaks who knew by tenth grade exactly where they were headed, and arranged their curriculum—and life—accordingly. 

Darcy didn’t have any better idea now than she did in tenth grade, which in turn hadn’t been any clearer than third grade. Actually, in third grade she’d been pretty damn sure she was going to be a vet. To big animals, not people’s wimpy house-pets. Then she’d wanted to be an archeologist. And then an actress. And then—okay, she’d gone through a lot of career plans as a kid. 

Maybe she was just a flake. If it wasn’t an ingrained personality trait, surely she would have grown out of it by her mid-twenties. Or maybe she just hadn’t found her calling.  Maybe there was one thing out there that she was made for and when she found it, she would just _know._ The longer she thought about it the more options provided themselves, and the less appealing any of them sounded.  

Occam’s razor; she was a flake. Also, she had entirely too little pizza and beer in her apartment to be having an existential crisis. 

Crisis postponed, she checked her email one more time while she dialed for delivery.  Jane had emailed her back. 

> Hi Darcy, 
> 
> Sorry, I should have asked how you were doing. I’m still in New Mexico, only now I’m working at a NASA facility. NASA, Darcy. _NASA._
> 
> I got most of my stuff back, and people to boss around to build new stuff. I don’t know why; the old stuff was perfectly fine when they took it. If SHIELD broke my machines I am going to learn Karate just so I can hurt somebody. 
> 
> Your filing system makes no sense but I found the file I was looking for. And some I wasn’t looking for. There’s a file in here labeled “Ponies.” Why is there a file labeled “Ponies?” 
> 
> Love,
> 
> Jane 
> 
> P.S. Nope, no iPod.

God dammit. If SHIELD had broken her iPod she was going to be right there with Jane in that dojo.  She closed her browser without answering. The Ponies folder had a perfectly logical explanation—if Jane’s experiments accidently discovered time travel, it would be handy to have records of past horse race winners—but Jane could wait until tomorrow to find that out.

Fuck everything; she settled in for an evening of pizza, reality television and absolutely no heavy thinking whatsoever.

 

***

 

The next day was more of the same: she answered Jane’s email, had cold pizza for breakfast and attended a class she was mildly interested in, but not enthusiastic about.

She hadn’t seen Lonnie around since she left him in the coffee shop but she wasn’t too concerned. The dude worked for SHIELD; his resume probably said he was darkness and the night. 

It wasn’t until it was 4:10 and she was sitting in their corner of First Cup—it was theirs, she’d claimed it—that she began to wonder. Granted he hadn’t really agreed to meet her here, but being stood up still sucked. 

She looked out the window. Nothing. Unless the dude had an invisibility cloak, he was nowhere. Five more minutes and she had just reached the portion of the show where she began muttering imprecations under her breath when somebody slid into the chair across from her and set a cup on her table. 

“You’re not Lonnie.” 

The man was at least six inches shorter than Lonnie for one thing. He wasn’t in a suit, for another. 

“Lonnie had to go away,” he said. And then nothing. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back and stared at her. 

Darcy pulled her bag closer to her and reached inside casually. His eyes tracked every move so clearly she needed to work on the whole ‘casual’ thing. As her fingers closed around her taser she asked—in a remarkably calm voice, if she did say so herself—“Did you kill Lonnie?” 

The man’s eyebrows shot up. “Kill him? No. I didn’t kill him.” He laughed. 

It wasn’t a very sinister laugh. More bemused. He didn’t seem particularly villainous. A little skeevy maybe; who sits down across from a girl and just stares? Creeper. 

“Where’s Agent—“ shit, she’d forgotten Lonnie’s last name. Kevins? No. Shit. “—baby?” 

“Agent Baby?” He was definitely amused. “Agent Baby has been relieved. He may have clearance to keep an eye on you, but he does not have clearance to deal with Dr. Foster. If Dr. Foster is going to forget that you are no longer the Igor to her mad scientist, then he no longer has clearance to monitor your correspondence and internet use.” 

Darcy’s face scrunched up.  “You guys monitor my internet use?” 

He just smiled. Rather knowingly, Darcy thought, but that might be her guilty conscience. Hey, who didn’t look at weird shit on the internet? Right? 

“You’re his replacement?” 

The guy laughed. Actually laughed at her.  Again. 

“Lady, you are so far below my pay grade it’s not even funny. I’m just here because I was available in the area until your new babysitter will be here in, oh”—he pulled out his phone and checked the time—“another five minutes.” 

Five minutes turned out to be more like two, but it was an uncomfortable two minutes spent staring and sipping coffee at each other, with the man occasionally chuckling “Agent Baby” and Darcy’s hand in her bag all the while. 

Finally the door opened and the man sat up straighter in her chair. Looking back over her shoulder Darcy was only mildly surprised to see Coulson heading their way, the barest hint of a bemused frown pointed at her unsolicited coffee buddy. 

“Agent Barton, your relief is here, get out to the car.” Looking behind him Darcy saw there was indeed another blank-faced suit, presumably waiting to be switched on and given a task. 

“Sir, yes sir,” said the man—Barton—with a grin that was not a little cheeky, and Coulson turned back to look at Darcy. 

“Miss Lewis,” he said with a half-smile that wasn’t really particularly comforting. “Agent Cassidy will be your new detail, I expect you’ll become fast friends.” He said this last with a pointed look in the direction of Barton, who had stopped to lean near the door and was watching the introductions unabashedly. He just shrugged at Coulson. Apparently, despite Darcy’s experience on the subject, hanging out in coffee shops with the target of their surveillance wasn’t SHIELD SOP. 

“Sup?” she said to Cassidy. Cassidy just nodded, before turning around and walking out, Barton behind him. She could only assume he was going to go outside and stare at her some more—through the window. 

“Wow,” she turned to Coulson. “Did Tony Stark build that for you?” 

“Agent Cassidy will continue monitoring and surveillance; he will also see to your protection in the event that it becomes necessary. Please don’t hang out with him in coffee shops; they’re a nightmare as far as privacy is concerned.” 

“Sir, yes sir,” she said in an imitation of Agent Barton. Coulson didn’t look amused. 

Did Coulson ever look amused? 

“Before I go”—he reached into his suit jacket and pulled something out—“these are for you.” 

“Is this—these are my _headphones_.” 

“Indeed they are.” 

He was already most of the way to the door when she called out, “Where’s the rest of it?” 

This time when he looked back at her, he did look amused. “The wheel of bureaucracy grinds slowly, Miss Lewis.” 

She was still staring stupidly when the door wheezed shut behind him. 

Son of a bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betaed by tocourtdisaster, but she’d been drinking at the time. 
> 
> Chapter title taken from [Mistaken for Strangers ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHaln2drAdc)by The National
> 
> Fun Fact: Did you know Puente Antiguo means Old Bridge, which the Bifröst _totally is_? 
> 
> Darcy attends Reed College in Portland, which I swear I didn’t choose just because their mascot is a goddamn [griffin rampant.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c0/Reed_College_griffin.svg/282px-Reed_College_griffin.svg.png)
> 
> First Cup is actually a place that exists and they do, in fact, have bagels.
> 
> [Quantum Foam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam) is an idea in quantum mechanics that scientists have theorized could cause tiny wormholes to form and collapse organically. Hawking has said that it might be impossible for these to be expanded to the size needed to convey a human being and stabilized, but this is comic book science.
> 
> Occam’s Razor is the principle that states (paraphrased) whichever hypothesis makes fewer assumptions is more likely the correct one.
> 
> SOP: Standard Operating Procedure, but you know this one already.

**Author's Note:**

> Betad by tocourtdisaster.
> 
> Fic title from [Future Starts Slow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwudqTCkBis) by The Kills


End file.
